Governor overturns flawed system's death penalties

Illinois Governor George Ryan has pardoned four inmates on death row and is considering sparing the lives of another 150 condemned prisoners.

"I couldn't live with our process knowing how badly it was faulted," Mr Ryan said, calling flaws in the State's death-penalty system "truly shameful".

The four pardoned were all tortured by Chicago police who allegedly placed plastic bags over the heads of three of them in near suffocations, Mr Ryan said. Three of the four were to be set free immediately and the fourth must remain in jail because of separate, unrelated convictions, though Mr Ryan said those too may be tainted.

He said letters were being sent out to the families of the remaining men and women on the state's death row, and to the relatives of their alleged victims, disclosing whether he had commuted their sentences to life in prison without parole.

Mr Ryan would soon make those decisions public, but he hinted that at least some would be commuted.");document.write("

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He said one issue he had discussed with the families of murder victims was the lack of "perks" and the rigours of life in prison without parole.

"There are prisons where there is no air-conditioning ... and in every prison inmates are told what to do at all times," Mr Ryan said. "I think we have to keep things in perspective."

His office earlier refused to comment on one report that he had settled on a mass commutation of nearly everyone left on death row.

Mr Ryan also disclosed that former South African president Nelson Mandela had called him on Thursday urging mercy for the condemned inmates and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had asked for the same in a letter.

"They both said America is the beacon for fairness and justice and the death penalty doesn't really pay homage to that," Mr Ryan said, adding that the pleas "had an impact on me".

Mr Ryan is a one-term Republican whose political career was ended by a bribery scandal that occurred while he was secretary of state. Monday is his last day in office.

Illinois is one of 38 states with death-penalty laws on its books. The US Federal Government has also reinstated the death penalty and carried out its first two executions of the modern era last year.

Mr Ryan ordered a moratorium onexecutions nearly three years ago after investigators found the state had almost executed 13 inmates who were later found to have been wrongfully convicted.

The unprecedented review turned into a flashpoint for a renewed debate over the death penalty in the US. The Death Penalty Information Centre said there had been 102 such cases in 25 states since 1979.

While opinion polls indicate that a majority of Americans still favour capital punishment, support has been eroding and the American Bar Association has called for a national moratorium on executions until questions can be addressed.

The numbers of prisoners who could be affected by Mr Ryan's decisions are imprecise because some have been added to the death-row population since his review began and others did not ask him to review their cases.

A commission created to review the Illinois system found it, in Mr Ryan's words, "badly broken and deeply flawed".

The panel said the poor were at a disadvantage, too many crimes drew the death penalty and capital convictions too often relied on police abuse and jailhouse informants.

The US is the only Western democracy in which the death penalty is still used and its closest allies routinely denounce the practice.